eFax Blog

Tuesday, October 22, 2013
by eFax Team

You’re a busy professional, always on the go, and your smart phone has become the lifeline of your business.

People mistakenly call yours a “home-based business,” but the truth is that you’re always doing business, no matter where you are — in the car, at the coffee place, while you’re shopping for groceries, in the airport, at your child’s soccer practice…

The eFax mobile apps for the iPhone and Android let you view, annotate, add your digitized signature and send faxes right from your mobile phone. So that’s one great way to use your phone to keep your business humming when you’re on the go.

But that got us thinking: How else can an on-the-go professional like you leverage your ever-present smart phone to make your day run smoothly? Here are a few suggestions we came up with.

1) Find your car quickly, every time.

Scheduling meetings as often as you do means you probably find yourself in new parking structures regularly. When you park your car, it’s a great idea to use your smart phone’s camera to snap a quick picture of the level where you’re parked, either written on a nearby column or at the elevators.

This relieves you of any stress of having to keep one more piece of trivial data in your memory as you walk in to a meeting or presentation. Snap it and forget it.

2) Save time looking for confirmation numbers.

Flight confirmation number. Rental agreement number. Hotel reservation number. You probably receive these all in email when you book your travel. But if you do this days (or even weeks) before your trip, it can take a while finding these emails at the moments you need them on the big day.

So instead, as soon as you get your travel confirmation details — your rental car agreement, for example — jot down the number in the Notes app on your smart phone. That way you’ll have access to it instantly at the right moment: when you’re walking up to the rental counter at the airport. No need to thumb through 100 email messages to find it — or worse, trying to remember which car company you used.

3) Save time looking for business cards.

When someone hands you a business card these days, chances are you're thinking, What am I supposed to do with this thing? We agree — it would be much more convenient if they sent you a vCard, or just emailed you their contact details.

But rather than throw the card into a desk drawer — where you’re not likely ever to find it again — use your smart phone’s camera to snap a picture of the card. You can always add the data into your smart phone’s contact list later. There are even mobile apps that do this automatically — several of which ZDNet reviews here.

But for the moment, you’ve captured the info, and now you can do what you probably want to do with all paper these days: recycle it!

eFax Team
- eFax Team

eFax is the world’s #1 online fax service, and we have been for nearly 20 years. More than 11 million customers use eFax every day to send and receive business faxes online, including small businesses around the world and nearly half of the Fortune 500.